Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, an influential philosopher and theologian, and a jurist in the tradition of scholasticism from the county of Aquino in the Kingdom of Sicily.
Panel of an altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, Italy, by Carlo Crivelli (15th century)
The Castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano
Thomas is girded by angels with a mystical belt of purity after his proof of chastity. Painting by Diego Velázquez.
Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Communis, between Plato and Aristotle, Benozzo Gozzoli, 1471. Louvre, Paris.
The Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilian priest named Dominic de Guzmán. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally display the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning 'of the Order of Preachers'. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans. More recently, there has been a growing number of associates of the religious sisters who are unrelated to the tertiaries.
Saint Dominic, portrayed in the Perugia Altarpiece by Fra Angelico, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia.
A figure depicting the term domini canes ('hounds of the lord') since the Inquisition in the 13th century, on a corner of a former Dominican monastery (before the Reformation), Old University, Marburg, Germany.
Saint Dominic on the front cover of Doctrina Christiana catechism in Spanish and Tagalog with an eight-pointed star (a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary) over his head. Woodcut cover. Printed in Manila in 1593.
Saint Dominic (1170–1221), portrait by El Greco, about 1600.
